My official retirement was June 2004. I began my career as a professional educator in September 1979, but I was paid to teach swimming lessons to non-swimmers and to train lifeguards when I was 15. That is a combined 38 years of being formally engaged with students needing to learn what I was hired to teach. During those years I have attended my share of workshops, training sessions, conferences, college classes in various educational departments and numerous faculty meetings and parent conferences. As a professional educator, I have worked in the public sector and the private sector. I have been a regular classroom teacher, a special education resource room teacher, a curriculum developer, a principal, and a director of educational services for adolescents housed in a psychiatric hospital. Along the way I have developed some strong views on the many aspects of education. Having taught in many different work environments, I needed to develop the skill of meeting the requirements of each different situation while staying true to my beliefs about the responsibility, ethics and inherent obligations of adults nurturing students.
I was not the only one with strong views concerning the education of children. I venture to say that every adult connected to a child whom I have encountered from the time I started teaching swimming to this day has his or her strong opinions on education. Every employed teacher must find a method of maintaining his or her personal integrity within a workforce teeming with emotionally ladened opinions regarding how the child should be educated. There are scores of books on this topic. In the final analysis, however, the truth is that from the time students take their seats in homeroom at the beginning of the day until homeroom at the close of the day, it is the teacher standing alone in front of his or her class of 20 to 30 students that determines the outcome of the days events. Education, good, true education, is a cooperation between the teacher and the student(s). First of all and foremost, education is an experience in cooperation. Cooperation can be achieved in multiple ways — from the cooperation found in authoritarian dictatorships to the cooperation found in responsible and nurturing democracies.
Again we are at a juncture for making a choice. What will be the foundation upon which our education decisions are to be made? Should we use the Decision-Making Coin and flip to determine our choice between exploiting or nurturing, between authoritarian dictatorship or nurturing democracy? Or, should we ignore the need to determine which foundation to use and just jump into the experience and tease out all of the particulars of our educational system? Or, do we choose to skip randomness and consciously choose the foundation upon which we want to build? Once we have processed all of these actions, we no longer act randomly because we have delineated with clarity the possibilities we face before we take whichever action we choose.
I am in favor of deliberate action based upon conscious choice. Between exploiting and nurturing, I choose nurturing.
Is our mission a choice? Do we choose to educate or do we choose to train? Or, a), is educating or training the outcome of all of our other choices (if we chose to act by choice), or b), the outcome of our random actions because we chose to ignore the choice in front of us, or c), we simply acted without being aware of the option between educating or training? Simply delineating these options, let alone considering each and every one, demonstrates (once again) the need to be educated.
Since these options have been formulated, consider this: In authoritarian dictatorships, citizens need only to obey. In such a situation, citizens only need to be trained. Creative thinking is allowed only within the narrow confines of the parameters acceptable to the dictatorial rule. Free thinking is absolutely taboo (unless you absolutely keep your free thoughts to yourself). If the level of cooperation is that of an authoritarian dictatorship, then training is the foundation upon which the educational system is built.
Based upon the description of the above paragraph, and because of my understanding that the human character is a whole entity composed of pairs of opposites such as a negative and a positive side; an exploiting side and a nurturing side; a dictatorial side and a democratic side, I choose a foundation based upon educating over training. But what does that mean? How is educating different from training apart form the required adherence to strict obedience? Are they opposites?
They are not opposites. Educating involves some training but training is not the focus. Training is not about educating. If training has some elements of educating those elements are kept to the bare minimum especially in an authoritarian structure. Educating is about free thinking whereas training, for the most part, is not. Educating is about facilitating the ability of students to see a thing for what it is: nothing more; nothing less. Dictatorships do not like to be questioned and do not like to be scrutinized by the citizenship. Therefore investigations into social constructs are trained not facilitated, are controlled and tightly censored. In dictatorships students are trained to do ‘it‘ the way they have been told how to do ‘it‘.
You may have begun to perceive that my understanding and perception of educating over training is tightly connected to my understanding of the three coins. I concur. I choose nurturing over exploiting and so educating offspring is about nurturing children’s facility with Truth, Honesty, Honor, Respect and Reciprocity. Educating children is about facilitating them to see a thing for what it is; nothing more; nothing less but know that wonder and mystery are forever and always present. While you aspire to see something or someone for what it is and who he or she is, you will never be able to know absolutely everything there is to know. That being true, it is important to expose students to nonlinear elements and chaos theory if only to reinforce the complexity, wonder and mystery of The Universe. Educating is also about Two Sides of the Same Coin — Freedom and Responsibility. Being two sides of the same coin means that you cannot have one without the other. To live freely means that each individual needs to be responsible with his or her freedom. The individual needs to be educated to understand that he or she should choose to limit his or her freedom for the good of the community and to work with the community to facilitate each and every individual to become the best that humanity can offer. Educating is not about getting a job and amassing wealth. Educating is about the job of becoming more informed, more in the spirit of learning, and being enthusiastic about metamorphosing into a better you.
Training is instructing. Consider language acquisition as a means to understand the difference between instructing and educating. Learning the conventions for punctuating the written word is an activity of instruction. Sentences begin with a capital letter and end with a period for a declarative statement, a question mark for a question, and an exclamation mark for an exclamation of feeling, and so forth. Matters of punctuation are matters of instruction. Facilitating self expression and situations to stimulate free thinking while highlighting issues of cooperative actions within a community is educating. To further the idea of facilitating self expression as a matter of educating as opposed to instructing consider that the poet, e e cummings used punctuation (what there was of it) in unconventional ways.
Remember the professor in graduate school with whom I bumped heads over his segregation of ideas and concepts into neat regions whose borders were absolute barriers between regions of thought, like people who use metal or plastic picnic plates that have little barriers to keep the different foods separated on the plate? What he wanted was a demonstration of his instruction of the efficient use of the mechanics of behaviorism to shape the behavior of an unsuspecting, targeted individual. It is very much like asking students to write a lengthy essay to demonstrate the correct use of punctuation. He did not want and he shut down any discourse on the ethical issues surrounding the application of those mechanics. To my thinking, I conclude that he acted more like an instructor than an educating professor.
This failing might not be entirely his fault. I am reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s oration, “The American Scholar,” delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society on August 31, 1837.
“Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. … The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. … the scholar … In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
When scholars isolate ideas and concepts into ridged regions whose borders are absolute barriers between regions of thought, then they have not heeded Emerson’s 1837 warning. When schools and education systems divide the day, every day, day after day, into the four basic subject areas of English, mathematics, science and history with other periods of time allocated for gym, band, art, etcetera, then they have reinforced the notion that ideas and concepts are isolated clusters with limited relevance to each other. What does English have to do with mathematics or vice versa? Mathematics has some important relationships to science but what does science really have to do with English?
During the school year of 1991-92, I participated in the “Critical Skills Institute” presented through Antioch/NewEngland Graduate School. During the introduction to this institute it was explained that educators and business individuals were gathered for a retreat to collaborate regarding the needs of business and the teaching experience of educators to formulate the best educational program to develop a better work force. Twelve areas of learning were delineated from this retreat. There were:
Problem Solving Cooperation
Decision Making Collaboration
Critical Thinking Management
Creative Thinking Leadership
Communication Independent Learning
Organization Documentation
What is immediately striking about this list is the absence of the categories: English, Mathematics, Science, or History. I was extremely impressed with the Critical Skills Institute and resolved to integrate all that I learned into my classroom activities as much as possible.
A strong opinion that greatly influences my view on educating over training is that we, homo sapiens, are nature reflecting upon itself. This activity of nature reflecting upon itself is what truly differentiates homo sapiens from all other creatures on this planet. In prehistoric times our ancestors inhabited Earth much like all of the other animals; but, along the way of the passage of time, we hominidae began to distinguish ourselves from other animals. Our opposing thumbs were a significant departure from other creatures that facilitated our tool-making activity. The moving of the voice box to its current place was significant to our language development. There was another development that is less concrete and more difficult to perceive especially in its early, early emergence. Our ever expanding and more keenly penetrating consciousness is as important as our opposing thumbs or our spoken language.
Evidence of tool making is chronologically arranged by carbon dating artifacts obtained from archaeological digs. Written language can also be chronologically arranged by the same methods, but the spoken language is a wonder to be imagined. Consciousness can be only surmised by the interpretation of the collection of artifacts studied because consciousness is abstract and internal. Consciousness hovers over and quietly permeates our current discourse on the mind-body (brain) reflections.
There are two artifacts that impressed me as a glimpse of the emergence of a displayed consciousness — one was a simple face outlined on a small stone and the second was simply a human hand print on a cave wall. My recollection is that this cave painting looked as if the artist simply crushed up some brown-red pigment, put his or her hand on the cave wall as a stencil and somehow spray painted that pigment to leave a hand print of the human to endure for thousands of years. This ancient cave painting reminds me of the graffiti on concrete overhangs or country roadside boulders or phone booths: “Henry was here” or “Betty was here”. This behavior seemed to me to demonstrate a sense of self as distinguished from a sense of others, a value of the self publicly displayed to profess the beginnings of self reflection. Consciousness was on display.
Education is to facilitate the development of the best of what we are as an individual and as a group. How language developed is a different question from why language developed and, yes, the general issues regarding the attempt to answer a why question as opposed to answering a how question have not changed in the least. Interpretations and speculations will be unavoidable and will be, more than likely, the predominate elements structuring my point of view.
Speculation: if Homo sapiens evolved in a manner that facilitated the development and the expansion of consciousness, then is it not also possible that an expanding consciousness would seek or gravitate toward tools which would facilitate that development and expansion? Does not language greatly facilitate the exchange of one person’s consciousness with that of others who attempt to make their perceptions, interpretations, speculations, observations and judgments etcetera known? Language is the medium through which conversing occurs. It is my understanding that this speculation from the first grunts and gestures to the vast and diverse communications of contemporary society is the general framework in which all Homo sapiens have progressed.
If this speculation is close to being accurate, then the most important function in educating the individual is to facilitate a broad and deep understanding and proficiency with communication; not the study of English. Framing the educational program around communication would be advantageous because such a structure would break down the artificial barriers separating one field of study from all other perceptual pursuits.
All human expressions are forms of communications. The visual arts are a form of communication. Dance is a form of communication. Music, mime, poetry, business letters, law briefs, speeches and jokes are all forms of communications. Mathematics and science are forms of communications. If there is communication then there is a medium through which the communication flows. This medium is language. The language of music and the language of business letters for example are not the same language. The language of the communication must conform to the communication being transmitted but all languages have the same two required components. The communication must first be encoded by the sender into the language of the communication and second the communication must be decoded by the receiver of that communication. The degree to which the encoding and decoding is a mismatch is the degree to which communication is confused and misunderstood. Educating individuals about the process of communication is to facilitate clarity and efficiency in the communication process. Thus, the dominate area of education should be communication. The goal of education should be educating (not training) individuals to become multilingual individuals. By that, I mean facilitating fluency in the language of the visual arts, music, dance, writing, speaking, mathematical thinking, scientific investigation, leadership and so forth and so on. I embrace the 12 areas of focus listed by the Critical Skills Institute over the traditional core subjects of English, mathematics, science and history.
At the heart of mastering these twelve areas of proficiency is the expansion of the individual’s consciousness. To me, the process toward mastering each of these twelve areas of focus is an ever expanding feedback loop in which consciousness needs to expand to facilitate progress toward mastering each area. With each step along the way consciousness grows and becomes the catalyst for new insight that improves proficiency in that area. With improved proficiency, new awareness occurs which expands consciousness that continues the feedback loop spiraling to new levels of expanded consciousness. Educating is far more powerful than training.